Edward Abbey (V.O.): "The canyon country of southern Utah and northern Arizona-the Colorado Plateau-is something special. Something strange, marvelous, full of wonders. As far as I know there is no other region on earth much like it, or even remotely like it. Nowhere else have we had this lucky combination of vast sedimentary rock formations exposed to a desert climate, a great plateau carved by major rivers-the Green, the San Juan, the Colorado-into such a surreal land of form and color.


Photos of Abbey


Abbey chopping wood ANNCR (VO):

HE WAS A WRITER WHOSE WORDS AND IDEAS UNLEASHED THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT IN THE U.S.

A FREE SPIRIT WHOSE LOVE AFFAIR WITH WILDERNESS INSPIRED THOUSANDS TO TAKE UP THE CAUSE OF DEFENDING IT.

HE WAS EDWARD ABBEY, A TRANSPLANTED EASTERNER WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE AMERICAN WEST AND SPENT THE REST OF HIS LIFE TRYING TO SAVE IT.


DAVE FOREMAN:

He combined the idea of wilderness with the true sense of American freedom. I mean Ed Abbey was an American patriot in the steps of Daniel Chaise and Tom Paine and others like that.

Edward Abbey on camera
EDWARD ABBEY:

My role? I see myself as an entertainer. I'm trying to write good books... make people laugh, make them cry. Provoke them, make them angry. Make them think, if possible.


Photos of Abbey
ANNCR (V.O.):

ABBEY WAS A LARGER-THAN-LIFE FIGURE WHOSE EXPLOITS WERE THE STUFF OF LEGENDS. ANGRY AND PAINFULLY HONEST, A LOVER OF TOO MANY WOMEN, HE LIVED WITH THE SAME PASSION THAT CHARACTERIZED HIS WRITING.


Nancy Abbey on camera
NANCY ABBEY:

He loved the wilderness because he related to it so much, because he felt so at home in it that he didn't want it destroyed. But part of the outrage you hear with Ed is humor. Is his way of bringing people's attention to something he felt was very important.


Abbey in front of
Glen Canyon Dam
EDWARD ABBEY:

I see this as an invasion...these look like creatures from Mars to me."


Charles Bowden on camera
CHARLES BOWDEN:

He'd like to be descended from Joseph Wood Krutch and people like that and he isn't. He's descended from Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's a parallel to Abbey. They're both intensely moral people. They're both angry. God knows Ed was angry. Using humor I think both to deliver their message, and then in a real big way just to stay sane.

3:07 Opening Title over still photo of Abbey in desert:

EDWARD ABBEY:
A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS





Photos of young Abbey:
MUSIC

ANNCR (V.O.):

EDWARD ABBEY WAS BORN AND RAISED AROUND THE TINY APPALACHIAN COMMUNITY OF HOME, PENNSYLVANIA. THE OLDEST OF FIVE CHILDREN, ABBEY'S LITERARY TALENTS SURFACED AT AN EARLY AGE.



Shots of Abbey's cartoons

Childhood photo of Abbey
NANCY ABBEY:

When I was very young he had started to write what I remember as the Adventures of Lucky Stevens.
It was an adventure series that Ed wrote and illustrated, because he was a great cartoonist, about a young hillbilly kid who at one year was cracking whiskey bottles with his teeth, and who just had adventure after adventure and was this wonderful hero.


Jack Loeffler on camera
Teenage photo of Abbey
JACK LOEFFLER:

This is something that maybe many people don't know about Ed that up until he had really entered adulthood, he had not quite made up his mind whether he wanted to be a writer, a painter, or a musician. And I'm glad he opted for writing.


Nancy Abbey on camera
NANCY ABBEY:

He wrote about himself. I mean that's really Ed's topic. It wasn't the environment, it wasn't the southwest. It was Ed, it was Ed and what he took in from his surroundings.

Shots of Home, PA
Natural sound


Shots of church and Howard Abbey walking
HOWARD ABBEY:

This is the old Washington Presbyterian Church. My mother was a devout Christian, but the rest of us were kind of skeptical... especially Ed.

Shots of old farm


Photos of Ed and parents
NANCY ABBEY:

We lived on this old farm that Ed called 'Old Lonesome Briar Patch'. The birds the animals, everything around us was something that my parents really loved and brought to us.


Ed Mears on camera
ED MEARS:

He drew pictures continuously of the west. And this was what I wasn't surprised he spent his life in the west because he liked the country and the loneliness.

Photos of young Abbey

Shot of lonesome highway

Shots of Canyon country
ANNCR (V.O.):

IN THE SUMMER OF 1944, EDWARD ABBEY WAS A SKINNY SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD WITH A STRONG DESIRE TO SEE HIS COUNTRY BEFORE BEING DRAFTED INTO THE ARMY. HITCHHIKING AND RIDING THE RAILS CROSS COUNTRY, IT WAS THEN THAT HE FIRST LAID EYES ON THE STARK LANDSCAPES OF THE WEST.


John DePuy on camera
JOHN DEPUY:

He went on one trip out there before going into the service. A brief trip out there hitchihiking and riding the rails. And was astounded by it. That was the land he really wanted to really immortalize... and it was the sense of freedom there as well as the landscape.


FADE TO BLACK


Photos of Abbey in Army
ANNCR (V.O.):

ABBEY WAS DRAFTED INTO THE ARMY IN 1945. HE SPENT TWO YEARS IN THE SERVICE, MOSTLY AS A RELUCTANT MILITARY POLICEMAN IN ITALY AFTER THE WAR. AND ALTHOUGH HE WASN'T PARTICULARLY CUT OUT FOR THE ARMY, IT DID HELP PAVE THE WAY FOR HIS EDUCATION UNDER THE GI BILL.

Photo of Abbey and dog ANNCR (V.O.):

AFTER AN HONORABLE DISCHARGE, ABBEY RETURNED HOME TO THE STATES ARMED WITH A DESIRE TO LIVE AND WRITE IN THE WEST. HE SETTLED FIRST IN NEW MEXICO.


Photos of Abbey in college


Shots of Troy manuscript
EDWARD ABBEY (V.O.):

I started a novel my last year in college, way back in the spring of '51 at New Mexico. A terrible novel called Jonathan Troy. But as terrible as it was, nevertheless was published. And made me think of myself as a writer, whether I was or not, I really was not at that time. Didn't have the craft or the patience to write well.



Ken Sanders on camera with book
"It really isn't a very good novel, but what's important about it is all the seeds and germination of everything that's in the rest of these twenty one books here... It's all here. The anarchist philosophy, and the philosophical underpinnings of everything that Ed Abbey was, the hero of B. Traven, the "bruchnerfaun, the classical music lover, one-eyed Wobblie that later becomes Jack Burns in the various other novels, the flute player, all of the great themes that Ed would expound on began with this book.

VO: ABBEY EARNED HIS UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO IN 1951 AND EIGHT YEARS LATER RECEIVED A MASTER'S IN PHILOSOPHY. HIS GRADUATE THESIS REFLECTED HIS LIFELONG POLITICAL LEANINGS. IT WAS CALLED "ANARCHISM AND THE MORALITY OF VIOLENCE."

ABBEY WAS BRASH AND OPINIONATED, A CHARACTERISTIC WHICH FIRST LANDED HIM IN TROUBLE AT NEW MEXICO.



Ken Sanders on camera:

The Thunderbird was the literary magazine at the University of New Mexico. Ed was the editor for a short time because he published this issue in which, in an essay, called Anarchy and Violence, he advocated that all of the students burn their draft cards and he also put this Voltaire quote on the front cover, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." But he attributed it to Louisa May Allcott. The dean seized all the copies, almost all the copies, and had them destroyed. Ed, needless to say, was fired as the editor of the Thunderbird, and it was over ten years until UNM had a literary magazine again.


music/montage
William Eastlake Novelist

You have to be young, and arrogant, and stupid to believe that you have something to say that will interest any one at all. And I'm sure Ed had all those qualifications.

Photos:
VO:

DURING THE 1950'S, ABBEY STRUGGLED AS A WRITER. SEVERAL BOOKS WERE REJECTED BY PUBLISHERS BEFORE HIS SECOND NOVEL, THE BRAVE COWBOY, WAS PUBLISHED IN 1956.

Abbey:

I almost gave up at that point. By that time I was working part time, seasonally, for the Park Service as a ranger. And I gave serious thought to being a permanent, half-time park ranger. I was going to make a career out of seasonal work.



VO: WITH THE PUBLICATION OF THE BRAVE COWBOY, ABBEY'S LITERARY CAREER WAS STARTING TO TAKE OFF. THE BOOK ATTRACTED THE ATTENTION OF HOLLYWOOD AND IN 1962, KIRK DOUGLAS STARRED IN THE FILM VERSION OF THE NOVEL WHICH WAS RETITLED 'LONELY ARE THE BRAVE.' ABBEY RECEIVED A CHECK FOR $7,500 DOLLARS AND A SMALL BIT PART IN THE MOVIE.


Don Congdon on camera

I think the only thing Ed ever got out of that was that he has heard Kirk Douglas say very frequently that Lonely are the Brave, or the Brave Cowboy is his favorite picture. Of course he never mentions Ed or the original title of the book.

VO: TAOS, NEW MEXICO WAS AN EXCITING PLACE TO BE IN THE LATE 50'S. ABBEY DECIDED TO TRY HIS HAND AT JOURNALISM WHEN HE WAS OFFERED THE JOB OF EDITOR AT THE TAOS PAPER. IT WAS THERE THAT HE MET AN ARTIST WHO WOULD BECOME HIS LIFELONG FRIEND, JOHN DEPUY.

John Depuy

those were the roots of the, the beginning of the Monkey Wrench Gang. Some fool in Las Vegas, New Mexico, the Melody Sign Company, put up about 12 immense 40 foot signs, so everybody on the paper went out in the middle of the night and sawed them down. And the next week, the owner of the company came to put an ad in the paper for the apprehension of these criminals, and Ed being the editor took the ad and burst out laughing, so Mr. Melody asked him what was so funny. He said "Nothing, I'm thinking of something else." (Laughing)


VO: LIKE THE BRAVE COWBOY, ABBEY'S NEXT NOVEL, FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN, ALSO PITTED A RUGGED INDIVIDUALIST AGAINST A SOCIETY DETERMINED TO MAKE HIM CONFORM. IT WAS PUBLISHED IN 1962 AND LATER BECAME A TV MOVIE STARRING RON HOWARD.


#20 Charles Bowden (Author)

Good God, I mean you go back to the fifties, this guy is touting things that were very unusual for that time. Because with Ed, his criticism of what we call industrialism, or the factory system, or consumer society was not casual or flip. It was gut level. As his anarchism wasn't casual either. He was a philosophical anarchist. He wrote his MA thesis on nineteenth century anarchist thinkers. It wasn't just some costume he put on so he'd look zany in Bohemia.




Glen Canyon Dam construction

VO14: AS A YOUNG MAN ABBEY MADE MANY TRIPS THROUGHOUT THE WEST, ALWAYS WRITING IN HIS JOURNAL WHILE EXPLORING CANYONS, MESAS, MOUNTAINS, AND RIVERS. IN 1959, ON A FLOAT TRIP DOWN THE COLORADO THROUGH A DOOMED CANYON, ABBEY MET HIS FUTURE ADVERSARY FACE TO FACE. THE CONSTRUCTION OF GLEN CANYON DAM, FOR ABBEY, CAME TO SYMBOLIZE THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WEST. FROM THAT POINT ON, EDWARD ABBEY'S WRITING BECAME A CRUSADE. A CRUSADE TO SAVE WHAT WAS LEFT.


Edward Abbey

I objected to it because it destroyed one of the most beautiful canyons in the world. A canyon, I think, equal in beauty, grandeur, importance to the Grand Canyon. Quite different but equally beautiful.

Charles Bowden

in all his work... his trip down through Glen Canyon before the dam. There's this odd thing going on about how great it is and yet you can hear the footsteps behind you that are going to kill it.


John DePuy

The Colorado Plateau was always our dream land. It was the place of dreams.


Super:
Edward Abbey reading from Desert Solitaire

Somnolence-A heaviness in the air, a chill in the sunlight, an oppressive stillness in the atmosphere that hints of much but says nothing. The Balanced Rock and the pinnavles stand in petrified silence-waiting. The wildlife has withdrawn to the night, the flies and gnats have disappeared, a few birds sing, and the last of the flowers of summer-the globemallow-have died. What is it that's haunting me? At times I hear voices up the road, familiar voices. . . I look; and no one is there.


VO: EDWARD ABBEY'S WRITING AND PHILOSOPHY CAME TOGETHER IN 1968 WITH THE PUBLICATION OF DESERT SOLITAIRE, A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF HIS TWO SEASONS AS A RANGER AT ARCHES NATIONAL MONUMENT IN SOUTHERN UTAH DURING THE MID-FIFTIES.

NBC Almanac clip of Abbey

Arches National Park, 1987

Right about here was the official entrance station. I used to sit over here on a folding chair and answer questions in case a tourist showed up. Sometimes one did.

I lived right over here in a little plywood house trailer. There were a few holes in the floor so the rats and snakes could get out. It's gone now. The government made this place the road maintenance supply depot, that gravel dump over there. When I die, if I live that long, I'd like to be buried under this pile of gravel over here. If the Park Service would be so kind.

VO: THIS SMALL, UNPRETENTIOUS BOOK LAUNCHED ABBEY'S CAREER AS AN ESSAYIST AND DEFENDER OF WILDERNESS. AND ALTHOUGH HE COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND IT'S POPULARITY, THE BOOK PROPELLED HIM TO THE FOREFRONT OF THE BUDDING ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT AND RESCUED HIM FROM LITERARY OBSCURITY.


Abbey:

Desert Solitaire was published in the winter of '68 on a dark night, in a back street of Manhattan. But it got some good reviews. And enough of an audience so that I've been able to make a living as a writer ever since about 1970 or so.


Clarke Abbey

I think he really got on track with Desert Solitaire. He was sort of at a loss for what to write about and his agent told him "just write about your camping trips" and he said "Well gosh, that's easy. Can I really do that? Will that make a book?" And he wrote it and he said it just flowed and he was able to do it very easily and so he hit upon his niche there.



Doug Peacock

...he could never understand the great success of Desert Solitaire. He went to the grave not really understanding the success of that. He wanted to be thought of generally as a novelist. But once anybody, especially a novelist or another artist creates a work like Desert Solitaire which is an American masterpiece, it has a life of it's own and not even the artist owns it anymore. I'm sorry but Ed's opinion of his own work is just one of several here.



Ken Sanders Publisher
On camera

...one of the things from his archives that I found rather illuminating is that at one point in time he was so frustrated every time his agent would get a permission for an excerpt, particularly for textbooks, it was always from Desert Solitaire, never from his other books and he got so mad about it for about a three year period he instructed his agent to refuse all permissions to reprint from Desert Solitaire. "I've got plenty of other books that are better than that! Tell them to use something else!" And he would not allow them to reprint anything from Desert Solitaire.



Terry Tempest-Williams

I remember the first time I met Ed it was in the fall of 1979. He was giving a benefit reading for the Utah Wilderness Association. There was a party afterwards at a friend of ours and I brought my grandmother along because my grandmother was a great fan of Abbey's for what he stood for, although she'd not read any of his books. Which I think was typical of a lot of people. He was larger than life, he stood for something. My grandmother was in her eighties and she really wasn't intimidated by anyone. And she said, "Mr. Abbey, I will not read all of your books. I don't have time. But I will read one of them. Which one is your favorite?" And he looked around and everybody was listening. And he said, "Mrs. Tempest, follow me into the bedroom." And they went into Flo Carl's bedroom and shut the door. And she was in there for some time. And she came out and she had this grin on her face, Abbey said nothing and the party continued. And when I was taking my Grandmother home I said, "So Mimi, which book?" And she said "I vowed to secrecy and I will keep my word to Mr. Abbey." I noticed the next time I was at my grandmother's house, on her nightstand was a copy of Desert Solitaire.


VO: ALTHOUGH DESERT SOLITAIRE WAS NEVER ABBEY'S PERSONAL FAVORITE, HE SUCCEEDED NOT ONLY IN WRITING A CLASSIC ODE TO THE DISAPPEARING WEST, BUT ALSO IN CREATING A WHOLE SUBCULTURE OF DIE-HARD, YOUNG ENVIRONMENTALISTS WHO WOULD FOLLOW HIS EVERY WORD.


Dave Foreman

I can encounter people that I don't know when I give speeches and if they love the book Desert Solitaire like I do we're instantly friends and have an instant bond. There is a family of us out there, there is a clan of us out there. And I think the writings of Ed Abbey are the common denominator. They define a group of people in the west and we know we belong together. And that may have been Ed's real genius.


(Transition)

Super:
Edward Abbey
reading from
The Journey Home

We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Every man needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace. Every Boy Scout troop deserves a forest to get lost, miserable, and starving in. Even the maddest murderer of the sweetest wife should get a chance for a run to the sanctuary of the hills.

John DePuy

The media tends to build up an image of this rugged, almost barbarian. And I think they miss the point. Ed was a very sensitive person, extremely sensitive.

VO: CLARKE ABBEY WAS ED'S FIFTH AND FINAL WIFE. THEY WERE TOGETHER FOR TEN YEARS AND HAD TWO CHILDREN, BECKY AND BEN.

I was surprised when I met him by how quiet and gentle he was. I always expected him to be more of a Hayduke type, just from reading his books. Because they were so outrageous... but he was really quite gentlemanly and soft spoken. But he had a bite when he wanted, that's for sure.

Abbey audio

Can't we think of something funny to talk about? When are we going to get to my sex life? Sure, let's talk about your sex life! What's the history of your sex life? There will now be a five minute silence. Too bad we can't talk about that. I'd love to.


VO: EDWARD ABBEY WAS A MAN OF PASSION AND CONTRADICTIONS. HE WAS MARRIED FIVE TIMES AND FATHERED FIVE CHILDREN. THREE OF HIS MARRIAGES ENDED IN DIVORCE. ONE WIFE DIED OF LEUKEMIA. THE PAGES OF HIS BOOKS ARE FILLED WITH TALES OF ABBEY'S ON-GOING AFFAIRS OF THE HEART.

Abbey:
I think a man's life should progress from a wild and crazy and adventurous youth, through a sedate and domesticated middle age, in which we perform our biological functions of reproducing to a very modest extent. These days none of us should have more than one child. Going from middle age into a liberated and free and wise and contemplative old age in which we should have something to teach the younger generations.


Jack Loeffler

He felt, he claimed credit for saying that every man should sire a child, build a house with his own hands, and write a book. That's what he said.

Nancy Abbey

Well, his first wife said that he couldn't chit-chat. He couldn't talk about ordinary things. He could only talk about very important subjects. And I think that he was so much into his intellectual thoughts and his intellectual pursuits that he didn't really have the patience for relationships.

Clarke Abbey

I think he was a terriffic father. He was so wonderfully patient with his kids, at least the last two. He seemed to have settled down into fatherhood by then. He spent so much time reading and drawing with the kids, building fires and taking them places.

VO: NO ONE CAN DISPUTE THAT EDWARD ABBEY LOVED WOMEN, OR THAT HIS RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM WERE SOMETIMES STORMY. IN HIS LIFE AND IN HIS WRITING, WOMEN PLAYED A PROMINENT ROLE.

Clarke on camera

He loved women, but he would always do things to make them angry. Treating them as sexual objects in his books. He didn't treat me that way. He didn't treat the women he knew that way. But he would write about women in that way. It just seemed to be a real narrow view.



VO: LOOKING AT THE DEDICATIONS IN HIS BOOKS, ONE CAN CHRONICLE SOME OF THE MAJOR EVENTS IN ABBEY'S LIFE. IN 1971 HE DEDICATED A BOOK TO HIS YOUNG WIFE JUDY WHO HAD JUST DIED OF LEUKEMIA.

Jack Loeffler

The book Black Sun he wrote when he really in a strange place because Judy, mother of Suzie, had just passed away from leukemia. And there was a constellation of factors there that we don't have to go into, that really set him up to write that book which was a profound book. Interestingly enough, he had had a novel entitled Black Sun in his mind even from the early fifties.


VO: BLACK SUN WAS ABBEY'S FAVORITE WORK. FASHIONED AFTER HIS OWN EXPERIENCES AS A PARK RANGER AND FIRE LOOKOUT, IT IS THE STORY OF A SOLITARY FIRE LOOKOUT AT THE GRAND CANYON WHO FALLS DEEPLY IN LOVE WITH A YOUNG WOMAN... A WOMAN WHO LATER VANISHES WITHOUT A TRACE.

John DePuy:

We, at one point went down into the Grand Canyon, Thunder River, and we made a vow in this cave at Thunder River that he would write the west and I would paint it. And it was a difficult time. It was just after Judy died of Leukemia. And Ed was very distraught and we sat in the cave and he leaned against my shoulder and he cried. And then I cried and we cried on each other's shoulders about dead wives. My father had just died and then on that same trip we vowed we'd paint and write the west as we saw it.


Edward Abbey
reading from the book Abbey's Road

Four summers. Sweet and bitter, bittersweet hilarious seasons in the forest of ponderosa and sprice and fir and trembeling aspen trees. The clang of horseshoes in the twilight. The smell of woodsmoke from the cabin. Deep in the darkling pines the flutesong of a hermit thrush. Lightning, distant thunder, and clouds that towered into evening. Rain on the roof in the night.




VO: ABBEY ONCE WROTE IN HIS JOURNAL, "IF WILDERNESS IS OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS CAN SAVE WILDERNESS."

Jack Loeffler

He felt, and I think this is one of the greatest things he ever said, that a true patriot has to be willing to defend his country against his government. And I believe that.

EF footage

Dave Foreman

I would say the way I defined Earth First! in the beginning stages was that Earth First! was made up of Ed Abbey style of conservationists.


Edward Abbey

On camera I regard defending the wilderness as something like defending your own home. I regard the wilderness as my home, my true ancestral home. And when its being invaded by clear cutters and strip miners, I feel not only the right but the duty, the moral obligation to defend it by any means that I can.


VO: IN 1975, EDWARD ABBEY'S MOST POPULAR AND CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL WAS PUBLISHED. THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG TOLD THE TALE OF FOUR ENVIRONMENTAL DESPERADOS WHO TURNED THEIR PASSION FOR PRESERVING WILDERNESS INTO ACTION. THE FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS TRIED TO HALT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WEST BY BLOWING UP BRIDGES AND TRAINS, DISABLING BULLDOZERS, AND PLOTTING TO DESTROY THEIR ULTIMATE NEMISIS, GLEN CANYON DAM. THE BOOK NOT ONLY BROUGHT ABBEY'S RATHER EXTREME ENVIRONMENTAL VIEWS INTO THE MAINSTREAM, BUT ALSO INSPIRED THE REAL-LIFE ECO-SABOTAGE OF THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP EARTH FIRST.

Dave Foreman:

The Monkey Wrench Gang was indirectly inspiriational. We talked about encouraging that idea as a mythos, as a style as much as anybody actually doing it. But I think as the wilderness crisis became much more severe, as the forest service began to destroy more areas, roads penetrated deeper into the wilderness, more clear cuts sprang up, a lot of folks realized that it was time to really implement the Monkey Wrench Gang.

VO: IN 1981, DAVE FOREMAN AND FRIENDS WERE LOOKING FOR A WAY TO DRAW ATTENTION TO THEIR NEWLY FORMED ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP, EARTH FIRST!. THEY GOT THAT ATTENTION BY TAKING ON GLEN CANYON DAM... ABBEY'S OWN SYMBOL FOR THE RUINATION OF THE WEST. ABBEY WAS INVITED TO SPEAK TO THE FAITHFUL WHILE A SYMBOLIC CRACK WAS MADE IN THE DAM. THE PUBLICITY STUNT WORKED. EARTH FIRST WAS LAUNCHED, AND ALTHOUGH ABBEY WAS NEVER AN OFFICIAL MEMBER OF EARTH FIRST, HE SERVED AS A ROLE MODEL AND INSPIRATION FOR MANY IN THE RADICAL GROUP.

Dam cracking

Sound up of Abbey speaking to crowd.
"What is the use of building a great citiy if you haven't got a tolerable planet to build it on. Earth First!"


Jack Loeffler

.. It's an incredible book for its time. It really did something. And it created a point of view that was not happening on a cultural basis prior to its publication.


R. Crumb drawings intercut with...

VO: THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG LAY DEEP IN EDWARD ABBEY'S PAST. THE FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK WERE BASED ON THE MONKEY WRENCHING EXPLOITS OF ABBEY AND SOME OF HIS CLOSEST FRIENDS.

Edward Abbey
On camera

Originally they were inspired by people I know, you might say that. But as I began writing the story they became more and more fictional, more and more imaginary.

Shot of bulldozer disabling from EF footage.

VO: THOUGH IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND ANYONE WHO WILL PUBLICLY ADMIT TO SABOTAGE, ABBEY'S VIEWS ON THE SUBJECT ARE WELL DOCUMENTED.

Edward Abbey
On camera

Well, there was some field research involved in the creation of that book, yes. You think the statute of limitations has run out? Yeah, I did some... I did some night work. Yes. I'll admit that I did it 10, 15 years ago.



Doug "Hayduke"
Peacock

Well, I mean you know we talked about a lot of that. But as you know talk is cheap. He didn't totally make it up.


John DePuy

It was pretty informal. It wasn't as cohesive as the book, and most of the characters came later. In the early days it was a different group. But then Peacock came in and Ken, and Ed said he changed the names to protect the guilty! (Laughs)

VO: ABBEY MADE A CLEAR MORAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN SABOTAGE AND TERRORISM... WHICH HE DEFINED AS VIOLENCE AGAINST PEOPLE.

Abbey:

The distinction seems quite clear and simple to me. Sabotage is an act of force or violence against property. Or machinery. In which life is not endangered, or should not be.

Clarke Abbey

I think Monkey Wrench was a long time in transpiring. Just working back through his journals you see the name develop, Hayduke, and then you see some of the characters develop. I don't know a lot about it. Of course then he met Doug and Hayduke really took form. But through Jack Loeffler, Jack took him through a lot of the... the field studies, thank you.


Jack Loeffler

Well, the train didn't happen! (laughs) And the bridge didn't happen, and other things might have happened, but not the way they were described. I will say this, and I can say this now because, for future... anyone who might view this film, I was not conspiring, I was simply listening to my friend talk. Not all that long before he died when he said "We should do at least one Goddamned significant act, Jack. Let's go take out that bridge on Highway 95." And I thought that was an admirable thought, but I said "You know, Ed. We're getting too old for this shit!" (laughter) We crawled around a lot on our bellies in different places and we... things happened, you know, and I'm not going to talk about precisely what they were because I really don't know what the statute of limitations is. For Ed they've run out, but I'm still here.

Doug Peacock

The only sour note I remember all those years is the, whoever the publisher was, their legal staff had Ed write me just this very embarassing letter how I should only feel that the good parts of Hayduke are me, and not the bad parts, so I burned the letter. That was enough of that.

VO: KEN SLEIGHT, A RIVER GUIDE AND OUTFITTER FROM SOUTHERN UTAH, MET ABBEY IN THE MID SIXTIES. ABBEY NOT ONLY USED HIM AS A MODEL FOR THE CHARACTER OFSELDOM SEEN SMITH IN THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG, BUT ALSO TAPPED HIS CONSIDERABLE EXPERTISE WHEN IT CAME TO SOME OF THE MORE TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THE BOOK.



Ken "Seldom Seen" Sleight

He didn't come right out and tell me I'm writing about a gang here but he would take instances that I knew he was working on and was going to put in in the book. About lowering a jeep down over a cliff and things like that. Could it be done? Could it be done?
How would you do it? Verifying this and he ran a number of those off of me. And not until he came to me and said "Here's a manuscript. I want you to read it." And I took his Monkey Wrench Gang manuscript down on the Dolores River and there I laid, sat for a whole day reading that manuscript, and it was the most delightful thing that I think I've ever read.



Doug Peacock

whatever serious message that's there has to do with militancy and fighting for what you believe in. And I don't think you can organize very far to support those notions. I think they're rooted in the same sorts of romantic ideas Ed had about remaining an anarchist.



Nancy Abbey

I know that he would like to feel that his greatest contribution was his literature and his writing, because he considered himself a writer first and an environmentalist second, if at all. He didn't like to be considered an environmentalist. He'd like to be a writer. But I think his environmental impact has been tremendous and that I think, the effect of that is going to outlive the effect of his literature.

VO: IN 1985, EDWARD ABBEY GAVE A SPEECH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA, DEEP IN THE HEART OF CATTLE COUNTRY. ABBEY LOVED SKEWERING SACRED COWS, AND THIS NIGHT WAS NO EXCEPTION.

VO: ABBEY'S STRONG STAND AGAINST GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED GRAZING ON PUBLIC LANDS UNLEASHED A FIRESTORM OF CONTROVERSY ACROSS THE WEST. IT WAS A VINTAGE PERFORMANCE.



Dave Petersen

he was very much against beef, you know boycott beef and everything, but he loved to eat beef, so we ordered lunch and he ordered Teriaki chicken and I ordered this great big gigantic greasy hamburger, and they came out and he started looking at my hamburger and I could tell he really wanted my hamburger and he's saying no, I don't want to eat western beef and endorse that, and I said "Ed, I know... (and this was totally made up) I says Ed, I know the owner of this restaurant and this beef is imported from the east and you can trade me your chicken for this hamburger and you won't be doing anybody any harm. And I don't know if he ever believed me but we traded and he ate my hamburger so, you know, he had the strength of his convictions let's say... like all of us up to a point, but I would say beyond that point somewhat for him.

VO: TWO YEARS AFTER THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG WAS PUBLISHED, ABBEY RELEASED ANOTHER WORK OF NON-FICTION. THE JOURNEY HOME WAS FIRST IN A SERIES OF COLLECTED BOOKS OF ESSAYS THAT PICKED UP WHERE DESERT SOLITAIRE LEFT OFF. ABBEY STILL CONSIDERED HIMSELF PRIMARILY A NOVELIST, BUT IT WAS HIS NON-FICTION THAT WAS NOW BRINGING HIM HIS GREATEST ACCLAIM.


Edward Abbey
reading from
The Journey Home

The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent-a fearsome land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agoraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.

#20 Charles Bowden

...you've got to remember he's a guy who came out of the second war with aspirations. He hung around New York. You know he was in the room at the parties with guys like Norman Mailer, and I think he always wanted to make it that way. Ed always wanted to be a novelist. That the novels were the serious business and the essays and that were kind of like light casual work.


VO: DAVE PETERSEN WAS THE EDITOR OF THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS WHEN HE MET ED ABBEY IN 1984. THEY BECAME GOOD FRIENDS AND PETERSEN HAS NOW EDITED ABBEY'S JOURNALS FOR THEIR PUBLICATION IN BOOK FORM.

When you read 28 years of journals of a writer you would expect, and those I have read you see a gradual, progression or development of a Veltenshung, or world view as well as a writing style. With Edward Abbey it was full blown from the first page of the first journal. He was writing as eloquently then, he was thinking the things, saying the things then that he was saying in the last journal entry before he died. His world view and in a large part his artistic talent, were completely developed by the time he was 25 which is where the journals start.

VO: ONE OF PETERSEN'S FAVORITE PASSAGES FROM THE JOURNALS IS THIS ENTRY.

"written in 1988 and it's called a note to my fellow American writers. What a gutless pack of invertibrates you mostly are...

... A living slime mold on our intellectual life. " 7:34

John DePuy

He was probably, next to Twain, the best essayist that the west has produced. And then some of the things from his journal that was published as 'Voice Crying in the Desert,' they're sublime, they're painterly. They're, he had the vision of a painter.


Charles Bowden

If you look at Abbey's work, he spent, I don't know, thirty, almost forty years writing installments on one book. And the book's about what he thought was right with the country and what was wrong. And what he thought was right with the country was the people that lived in it and the land they lived on. And what he thought was wrong with it was our economic system, a kind of vicious, self destructive industrialism that numbs them with goods and turns them into robots. He was basically a hillbilly from Appalachia who knew how to write, who wanted to restore some hollow up in the mountains, and they all read that way. There's hardly a flip, shallow, hip line in anything he wrote.


VO: IN THE 1980'S ABBEY PUBLISHED GOOD NEWS, A FUTURISTIC WESTERN THAT FORETOLD THE COLLAPSE OF INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION. ABBEY ALSO BEGAN SERIOUS WORK ON A BOOK WHICH HE HAD CONCEIVED OVER THIRTY YEARS EARLIER.

Edward Abbey VO

Should be published about 1984, time to get out of the country!


VO: HE CALLED THIS BOOK 'ADVENTURES OF THE BARBARIAN,' A TITLE HE LATER CHANGED TO 'THE FOOL'S PROGRESS.' IT WAS A PICARESQUE NOVEL BASED ON ABBEY'S OWN LIFE.


Jack Loeffler

.....he wanted Fool's Progress to be a superb, masterful novel. And I know that this novel had generated a lot of thoughts for years and years and years, decades actually. This was the novel that he had been working toward all of his life.

VO: ABBEY'S WORK ON THE NOVEL CAME TO A HALT IN 1982 .


Jack Loeffler

Ed had not been feeling too well and had wanted to talk to the guy who was our doctor, and shortly thereafter, within fifteen or twenty minutes, he actually keeled over right on the floor, and so Clarke and I loaded him into the truck and took him off to the hospital.
...the next day, Ed was diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer, and he turned to me and he said, "Well Jack, I guess I won't have to floss anymore."


VO: THE DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER FORTUNATELY WAS WRONG. BUT ABBEY'S AILMENT WAS STILL QUITE SERIOUS. WHAT HAD STARTED AS A PAINFUL BOUT OF PANCREATITIS BECAME A CONDITION THAT WOULD CAUSE INTERNAL BLEEDING FROM HIS ESOPHAGUS. ABBEY BATTLED THIS AILMENT FOR SEVEN MORE YEARS.

Clarke Abbey

For the most part he was able to carry on with what he did on a regular basis. There would just be occasions where he would have a bleed and it would really bring him down for a month or two, just until his blood level came back up.


VO: ONLY A FEW CLOSE FRIENDS KNEW OF ABBEY'S HEALTH PROBLEMS. WORK ON "THE FOOL'S PROGRESS" RESUMED AND HE AUTHORED COUNTLESS ARTICLES, ESSAYS, AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. THREE MORE BOOKS OF COLLECTED ESSAYS WERE PUBLISHED, DOWN THE RIVER, BEYOND THE WALL, AND ONE LIFE AT A TIME, PLEASE. IN 1986, ABBEY INVITED A FRIEND TO JOIN HIM ON A CROSS-COUNTRY TRIP BACK TO HIS BOYHOOD HOME IN PENNSYLVANIA. THAT TRIP BECAME THE THREAD THAT RUNS THROUGHOUT THE FOOL'S PROGRESS.


Dick Kirkpatrick on camera

We would get up and drive. He had his tape recorder. He'd make notes.

VO: PASSING THROUGH SMALL TOWN AMERICA, ABBEY TOOK NOTES AND KIRKPATRICK PHOTOGRAPHS. TOGETHER, THEY TELL THE STORY OF A REAL-LIFE JOURNEY BACK TO EDWARD ABBEY'S ORIGINS... AND THE ORIGINS OF HENRY LIGHTCAP, ABBEY'S ALTER-EGO IN THE FOOL'S PROGRESS.

Kirkpatrick:

He knew he was dying on the trip. I can remember in retrospect questions that I would ask him about what he had done or where he had been or the kinds of things he was thinking. And all the clues were there. And all the clues were there in the novel. But I missed them.


VO: WHEN THE FOOL'S PROGRESS WAS FINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1988, IT WAS A DIFFERENT BOOK THAN THE ONE ABBEY HAD FIRST ENVISIONED, IN PART BECAUSE HIS OWN MORTALITY HAD INTRUDED ON A PREVIOUSLY FICTIONAL PLOT
.
Nancy Abbey

We always were fearful of the book he was going to write about us. And when he wrote Fools Progress actually I think we all liked it and all felt that his love of Pennsylvania and his love of the family and his respect for us really did come through. But he wrote that when he knew that he was dying and I think that softened alot of his feelings about where he had come from.

VO: THE FIRST FEW MONTHS OF 1989 SAW ABBEY'S HEALTH SLIP. HE WAS IN AND OUT OF THE HOSPITAL SEVERAL TIMES. BY THE END OF FEBRUARY, IT APPEARED THAT THE END WAS NEAR.


Clarke gives tour of Ed's writing cabin.

"This is Ed's office or cabin...
...This is actually where he died. It was sort of his last wish not to be in a hospital."
Cover with cabin and Sonoran desert shots

VO: EDWARD ABBEY DIED ON MARCH 14TH, 1989. THE DAY BEFORE HIS FRIENDS AND FAMILY HAD TAKEN HIM OUT IN THE DESERT TO WAIT FOR THE END. WHEN NOTHING HAPPENED, ABBEY WAS BROUGHT BACK TO THE CABIN IN THE BACKYARD OF HIS TUCSON HOME. HE DIED THERE THE NEXT MORNING, SURROUNDED BY HIS WIFE AND A FEW CLOSE FRIENDS.

(FADE OUT)

(FADE IN)

John DePuy

I was really crushed when he died. (on camera) I saw it coming, but when it happened it really took me."

VO: IN HIS JOURNAL, ABBEY LEFT SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS ON WHAT TO DO FOLLOWING HIS DEATH. HE WANTED TO BE TRANSPORTED IN THE BACK OF A PICKUP TRUCK TO HIS BURIAL SITE. "DISREGARD ALL STATE LAWS REGARDING BURIAL." HE WANTED HIS BODY TO HELP "FERTILIZE A CACTUS, A CLIFFROSE, A SAGEBRUSH, OR A TREE." "NO UNDERTAKER, NO EMBALMING, FOR GODSAKE! NO COFFIN."


Doug Peacock

God he did die well. You know he had that one pretty well figured out, you know, probably the last thing I remember about Ed was... The last great smile Ed ever gave was when he was told where he was going to be buried. That was good.


Charles Bowden

I was just gutted the day he died. And I think what gutted me more than his death was how upset I was. I was in my forties and I thought I was past that. He wasn't the first I'd ever had who died, and he won't be the last. But sometimes I'm driving around in the desert and I'll see a cloud floating over the land and it'll be kind of one of those dark clouds. .. with a fist inside of it. And I'll think of Ed, like he's up there floating over the landscape, angry. For some reason he's got this crazy smile on his face. Don't ask why.

VO: ABBEY WANTED NOT A FUNERAL, BUT A WAKE. WITH MUSIC, FOOD, BOOZE, A BONFIRE, AND LOTS OF DANCING. HE GOT NOT ONE, BUT TWO WAKES. ONE IN SAGUARO NATIONAL MONUMENT NEAR TUCSON, AND THE OTHER IN THE SLICKROCK DESERT NEAR MOAB, UTAH AND ARCHES NATIONAL PARK.

Ken Sanders

...the Saguaro wake wasn't enough. We needed some public comemoration. People just weren't through letting go of Ed. You know people were just showing up in bookstores and just standing around the Ed Abbey section because they just didn't know what to do, what to say. They just know how they felt.


John DePuy :

Peacock and Ken and some of the old crew got pretty wild. There was music and singing and dancing and music and expression of emotions. We cried. It was great. It was great.


VO: TWO MORE BOOKS WERE PUBLISHED AFTER ABBEY'S DEATH. "HAYDUKE LIVES" WAS THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG. AND "VOICE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS" WAS A COLLECTION OF THOUGHTS FROM HIS JOURNALS.

EDWARD ABBEY WAS SIXTY TWO YEARS OLD WHEN HE DIED. HE LEFT BEHIND FIVE CHILDREN, A WIFE, THREE EX-WIVES, TWENTY ONE BOOKS, AND A LEGEND THAT LOOMS LARGER EACH YEAR.


Charles Bowden

This one guy told me... we were having a drink, he said "the problem is the son of a bitch isn't dead!" But it is odd because I'm not a spiritual person, it's not that. But I just think he's floating around out there. You know he always wanted to be a vulture. I just think he's hanging up there on a thermal riding around having a good time, maybe smoking one of those big cigars he likes. But in an odd way I miss him a lot. And in another way I don't think he's gone. So that's how I think of him, he's kind of a burr under my saddle.

Don Congdon

It seems to me that Ed must be up there on the left hand of God, or downstairs where he might choose to be, just having a marvelous time looking down at everybody buying his books in much bigger quantities than they did when he was living. That would appeal to him you know in a perverse kind of way.


VO: WHETHER HE IS REMEMBERED AS A WRITER, A DEFENDER OF WILDERNESS, OR SIMPLY A GADFLY WHO KEPT THINGS STIRRED UP, EDWARD ABBEY CAPTURED, DEFINED, & DEFENDED THE WEST IN A VOICE THAT WAS UNIQUELY HIS OWN. BUT THOSE WHO KNEW HIM ONLY THROUGH HIS WRITING SAW JUST ONE SIDE OF ED... A SIDE THAT HE CAREFULLY CONCOCTED FOR HIS READERS. TO KNOW THE REAL ED ABBEY, TALK TO THOSE WHO WERE CLOSEST TO HIM. YOU'LL SOON DISCOVER THAT IN REALITY, ABBEY WAS MORE REAL AND OUTRAGEOUS THAN ANY CHARACTER HE INVENTED ON PAPER.

Jack Loeffler

There was a time back in around 1971 or '72 when Ed and I were out cruising around Black Mesa and Glen Canyon and all of those places as we did frequently in those days, when we got to the bridge that crosses above Lees Ferry and Marble Canyon, and we got out of our truck and went over and knelt and prayed for an earthquake. Hoping that the dam would collapse, and I think maybe that was the last vestige of that particular form of religiosity that either one of us ever experienced, because nothing happened! (laughs)


Clarke Abbey

He had always wanted a Cadillac convertible. So it was on his birthday, I think it was his sixtieth birthday he said he had to run out on an errand. And he came back with the Cadillac convertible.
It was one of those things that I thought was pretty stupid. But he had a great time.

Dave Foreman

I'm going to remember Ed as a friend, as an elder of my tribe, as the man who inspired people in the west to fight for the west.

Jack Loeffler

we travelled all over the place. That last week of his life as we were commiserating about the fact that we wouldn't get to do it anymore because it was apparent that the end was nigh, we figured we walked the equivalent across america together talking. We had a great conversation.


Edward Abbey's benediction

Benediction: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poet's towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you- beyond that next turning of the canyon wall. So long.